Dune Awakening plans to team up with big streamers right before launch, but it all goes south
Unfinished PvP, balancing issues, and cringe-worthy live breakdowns led to a ton of backlash from the community over the survival MMO. It’s clear this game isn’t ready yet.
Funcom decided to go all in with one last beta weekend and a massive streamer event. They wanted to show off their new survival MMO in the best light, but unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. And it all went down live in front of thousands of viewers.
Dune Awakening’s streamer event was a disaster
From May 9th to 12th, 2025, Dune Awakening’s biggest beta weekend kicked off – no NDA, tons of beta players, and a massive LAN party streamed live from London. Top Twitch streamers were supposed to show off the game in epic PvP matches to get everyone pumped. But as soon as the event started, it became clear that the game has some serious issues. Instead of a thrilling streamer showdown, viewers were treated to a textbook case of poor game design.
YouTuber Eroktic had little positive to say about Dune Awakening, even stating, “no matter what they do, PvP is unfixable. It would be easier to just start from the scratch”. And it’s hard to blame him for such a bold statement.
Take Shroud, for instance. He found himself in a very unfair PvP situation. Despite using one of the simplest weapons in the game (a knife) his opponent Tyler1 kept stunning him over and over. The terrible game balance was really on full display.
The devs felt like they had to step in during the stream and promised to fix the issues before launch. But by that point, the damage was done. Poeple saw firsthand just how rough the PvP really was. The comments on the LivestreamFail Reddit post are absolutely brutal. This whole event is definitely going down in history.
Summit was struggling to craft a bandage for like 5 minutes when finally someone in chat said it was bugged and the devs had to spawn in bandages for them
I played the alpha test in January for a bit and my thoughts were "oh this is a genuine alpha so it's still a few years away from release. I'll check back in a couple of years". 1 month later they go "Hey we're releasing in May!" (before they pushed it back to June) and I knew it was doomed.
- Talents
I wonder how many preorders got canceled after people watched this sponsored stream today
For a lot of Conan Exiles vets, it was like déja vu. That game had its own share of PvP balance issues, bugs, and performance problems. It had potential, sure, but it never really lived up to it and that reputation never went away. Now, it feels like we’re watching the same story play out again.
